--- title: Mother’s Day: Warren Buffett’s Son on Giving, Empowerment description: The most radical way to advance meaningful change is to shift economic, social and cultural power to those who don’t have it. canonical: https://time.com/4317855/mothers-day-buffett-giving/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-05-05T17:00:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:44:46.653Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The Buffett Family: Philanthropy Must Shift Power to Others og:description: This is most radical way to advance meaningful change og:url: https://time.com/4317855/mothers-day-buffett-giving/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt06f82b6069b6d8f3/698892108e06017edf465c05/unknown.jpeg?branch=production&width=426&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 426 og:image:height: 240 og:image:alt: unknown.jpeg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Buffett Family: Philanthropy Must Shift Power to Others twitter:description: This is most radical way to advance meaningful change twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt06f82b6069b6d8f3/698892108e06017edf465c05/unknown.jpeg?branch=production&width=426&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Buffett Family: Philanthropy Must Shift Power to Others > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=ba1a3cef-7169-452e-9c7c-96d27c9d0c93&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Two Activists on How They Knew They Wanted to Change the World [Watch (HLS stream): Two Activists on How They Knew They Wanted to Change the World](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/rtI4aANS.m3u8) (5:11)  _Published 2016-04-28. Ben Rattray, founder of Change.org, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a documentary filmmaker, sit down and discuss starting transformation around the world._ by [Jennifer Buffett](https://time.com/author/jennifer-buffett/) and [Peter Buffett](https://time.com/author/peter-buffett/) May 5, 2016 5:00 PM UTC  Taylor Crothers by [Jennifer Buffett](https://time.com/author/jennifer-buffett/) and [Peter Buffett](https://time.com/author/peter-buffett/) May 5, 2016 5:00 PM UTC In our years in philanthropy, we’ve seen the idea of “empowerment” thrown around a lot. Donors want to empower women and girls to gain access to education, to pursue a career, to speak out about domestic violence, and to run for office. Of course, we also want women and girls to feel empowered and to do all of these things—but as we approach 10 years leading the [NoVo Foundation](http://novofoundation.org/), meeting with women and girls and their allies throughout the world—we’ve stopped throwing that phrase around. Instead we want to ensure that our foundation’s dollars don’t recreate the very systems that keep women from accessing their power in the first place. We have been around long enough to know that we’re not just going to write a check and “empower” women. Women and girls are inherently powerful. What we _can_ do is help break down the barriers, such as violence and discrimination, that keep girls’ and women’s voices silenced and ultimately dominate and exploit them. And _how_ we give—either by dictating or by listening—makes a critical difference in whether we reinforce or shatter the assumptions and power structures that say that answers need to come from on high—on behalf of and for women and girls—rather than from them. In 2006 our lives changed entirely—Peter’s father, Warren Buffett, pledged about $1 billion to distribute as we saw fit. We were inspired by his own investment philosophy: look for undervalued assets. We founded the [NoVo Foundation](http://novofoundation.org/) with the idea that women and girls are really the world’s greatest undervalued asset. By investing in their power, we can get them the resources they deserve, and in so doing we strengthen communities and our shared future. We’ve spoken many times since that decision about _why_ this is the focus of our giving—girls become the mothers of every child born, mothers care for families and [break cycles of poverty and violence](http://www.girleffect.org/media/2943/why-girls-pdf-261115.pdf) —but this Mother’s Day we’ve been thinking more deeply about _how_ we make this the focus of our giving_._ As people who’ve had this unexpected and powerful opportunity to lead a global foundation, how do we give in a way that unlocks the voice and authority of women and girls, rather than continuing to limit them? Over the last decade, we have been on a journey, at once both global and deeply personal, toward a deeper understanding of theeconomic, cultural and politicalsystems that shape our world and what transformative change really means. And if anything is clear, it’s that true change will always require challenging conversations about “us”— not a monologue about helping “them.” In our work around the world visiting NoVo grantees, we started to see how philanthropy often thinks that it knows what’s best for communities rather than the other way around. Social progress was seen as something that should be driven by experts from outside, with new “solutions” and technological innovations that could drive “impact” in communities who needed help from others. We came to recognize philanthropy that dictates solutions top-down to communities as patriarchal at its core, even when it’s intended to help women and girls. How we give is therefore intrinsically linked to why we give. Form and function have to align. A philanthropist from on high will never reach down and “empower” a girl in Sierra Leone. That girl is inherently full of power and potential, and we should start by asking what stands in the way of her having a strong voice and influence on the decisions that shape her life and her community. As philanthropists, we should recognize that we don’t hold transformative solutions ourselves, and we never will. The most radical way to advance meaningful change is to shift economic, social and cultural power to those who don’t have it. We can do that by truly listening to and centering the perspectives and priorities of people who are the most marginalized. And by providing flexible, long-term funding that allows change to grow from the bottom up, rather than short-term, project based grants that assume change is directed from the top down. Progress should be less about “innovation,” and more about a radical trust in the idea that people know what’s best for their own lives, and should have the power to pursue it. We know we’re not alone in our passion for giving in a way that reflects balance, collaboration and connectedness to others. New research coming out later this month from the [Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy](https://philanthropy.iupui.edu/institutes/womens-philanthropy-institute/research/) shows, for example, that donors who work with women and girls are often motivated by their own personal experiences, whether positive experiences such as the birth of a child or receiving a scholarship, or negative, such as discrimination. As a diverse community of funders, we shouldn’t just treat the symptoms. We should uproot the deeply held norms and beliefs that marginalize women and girls in the first place, by carefully examining not only on what we fund but how we fund it. This research also shows that philanthropists who give to women and girls believe their funding leads to long-term social change. These findings mirror our own experiences, which are rooted in a commitment to moving whole systems – from a world of domination and exploitation to one of collaboration and partnership. It’s true—philanthropy can help bring about transformative change. But it’s time for us to open our eyes to the fact that philanthropy itself is a product of power and privilege, and to ensure that we are not reinforcing the social and cultural norms we are so desperately seeking to knock down. ## Transcript Individual people can't just start an individual campaign, [ CROSSTALK ] but spark a movement. Change. org. What is change. org? The ease with which we can enable people to participate in change as a feature, not a buck. My name is Ben Rattray, founder in. Of change. org. My name is Sharmeen Obaid- Chinoy, I'm a documentary film- maker, and my recent film just won an Academy Award this year. This is what happens when determined women get together. I feel like our role is just to spark this conversation. If we can get a country to talk about an issue that they otherwise were not talking about that's where we are most successful. [ MUSIC ] So, you didn't want to obviously start Change. org when you were ten years old. What did you want to do? I wanted to be an investment banker. My god. And it didn't change for me until my senior year I stand for it and I go home for winter holiday and I talk to one of my younger brother who comes out as gay. Total unexpected to me and then he says the things that transformed my life he says, the things that was most painful about being a closeted gay American at the time weren't the people that were explicitly anti- gay but those who refuse to stand up and speak out against them. Than. People like me when I was more ashamed than, than I ever had been before. And it was the first in that cause me the really deeper fact than what I wanted to do with my life. Somebody you know credited documentary film about your life. And I gonna find the biggest laborers or interventions that made you who do first Saying you are because you are quite remarkable. What are those big interventions? When I was very young I used to go to school through a neighborhood that was relatively poor. And I would look at the children on the streets and I would wonder why I was in a car and they were on the street. And very early on I realized that it had nothing to do with me, it was a luck of the draw. That I could have just as easily been out in the street and they could have been in the car. I could have been born in Pakistan but born into a family that didn't value women's education. I could have been married off when I was 15, 16- years- old. And so I used to be very angry when I was young. And my mother told me very early on that I should channel my anger in writing. And so I started writing. I was 17 and I did this big expose which landed me into a lot of trouble and My name was spray painted with profanities across my gate. I came from a progressive family. But, my father was also a very protective man. The morning that he went out, and saw my name Spray- painted with all of these profanities. He said I don't know what you've gone and done, but they have spray- painted your name and then he stopped. I half- expected him to say stop writing. And instead he said something to me that has really always stayed with me. He said that if you speak the truth, I will stand with you and so will the world. That's the one thing that I think is remarkable, is that It's only when you're creating change that one receives immense backlash. People in power don't care when the things we're doing aren't having an effect. And so it's almost the case that when you see negative reaction, either in masses or by elites That you actually know that you're having an impact. Do you ever think that the work that you do might take people away from being active participants and just becoming kind of keyboard warriors? Early on Time when we, about five years ago, this [ INAUDIBLE ] disparaging work, slacktivism as if people are taking action online and because of that it absolves them the feeling of civic responsibility, necessary to drive them to go offline. The reality is all that, that indicates and all our experiences. That there's a ladder of engagement, that the best way to get people engaged early on in issues actually providing not difficult means of onboarding but actually the easiest way to first get engage and sometimes signing a petition, it's a beginning and not the end of one's experience. The ease with which we can enable people to participate in change is Feature not a bug. One of the things as a filmmaker, sometimes people say well, they have a tremendous amount of activists who've been working on this for decades. Now you've just come in and done one film and gone off. I feel like our role is just to spark that conversation. If we can get a country to talk about an issue that they're otherwise would not talking about and had those activists Kind of find something that will help them get to the next stage. I feel like that's where we are most successful. Here are the nominees for best documentary, short subject. Everybody who reads the Academy Awards, the pundits all 22 of them said I wasn't gonna win, so I took my mother to walk the red carpet with me. I had a baby recently and I haven't been able to wear high heel shoes after that, so I took of my shoes and I was wearing flip- flops, and my mother kept saying, you know your Time is gonna be, they're gonna be calling your category very soon. And I was like no mom, I'm not winning, don't worry about it. So, I'm wearing flip- flops. [ LAUGH ] And then my category announcement time comes. And before I could say the next thing, they'd called up my name. A Girl in the River, the Prize of Forgiveness. And so I went on stage to accept my academy award wearing flip- flops. My mother. She's like who asked for Flops to accept the Academy Awards? And I was like, I didn't think I was gonna win. 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